We’ve told you that James Cameron (Titanic, Avatar) has stated there will be a second and third Avatar sequel. Recently, Cameron mentioned the possibility of an Avatar 4, as well as what else he’s focusing on in the coming years.

The New York Times and The Economist recently sat down with Cameron and quizzed him on Chinese film production and his upcoming projects. Cameron states:

I’ve divided my time over the last 16 years over deep ocean exploration and filmmaking. I’ve made two movies in 16 years, and I’ve done eight expeditions. Last year I basically completely disbanded my production company’s development arm. So I’m not interested in developing anything. I’m in the “Avatar” business. Period. That’s it. I’m making “Avatar 2,” “Avatar 3,” maybe “Avatar 4,” and I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them. I’m not interested in taking scripts. And that all sounds I suppose a little bit restricted, but the point is I think within the “Avatar” landscape I can say everything I need to say that I think needs to be said, in terms of the state of the world and what I think we need to be doing about it. And doing it in an entertaining way. And anything I can’t say in that area, I want to say through documentaries, which I’m continuing. I’ve done five documentaries in the last 10 years, and I’ll hopefully do a lot more. In fact, I’m doing one right now, which is on this, the Deep Sea Challenge project that we just completed the first expedition. So that’ll be a film that’ll get made this year and come out first quarter of next year.

Cameron also mentions how far along he is with Avatar 2:

We’ve spent the last year and a half on software development and pipeline development. The virtual production methodology was extremely prototypical on the first film. As then, no one had ever done it before and we didn’t even know for two and half years into it and $100 million into it if it was going to work. So we just wanted to make our lives a whole lot easier so that we can spend a little more of our brainpower on creativity. It was a very, very uphill battle on the first film. So we’ve been mostly working on the tool set, the production pipeline, setting up the new stages in Los Angeles, setting up the new visual effects pipeline in New Zealand, that sort of thing. And, by the way, writing. We haven’t gotten to the design stage yet. That’ll be the next.

Lastly, he discusses the benefits of the Chinese film industry, and the possibility of doing co-production with them:

It’s a major market. Possibly within this time scope of these two films, certainly by the time of the third film, it may rival the U.S. domestic market, if not surpass it. And there are economic advantages with respect to the percentage of gross revenue that flows back. So that needs to be weighed off against what it would cost us to set up our capability here. We’d have to take our capability with us to do the virtual production. The 3-D production is easy. That’s flight-ready to go anywhere in the world, so that’s not an issue. When I say 3-D, I’m talking about the cameras. With my C.P.G. hat on, my Cameron Pace Group hat on, we can put fly packs anywhere in the world to support up to 30 or 40 cameras. We can do it right now. Mobile units and all that sort of thing. So that’s not an issue. That could come here easily, and that might be very beneficial to the Chinese resident film community because the crews would get trained up on this equipment. They would have access to cutting-edge stuff, so that’s partly how we sell our position. But we’d have to bring over our virtual production capability with us. And again, that’s mobile. We took it with us to New Zealand last time. So it’s all doable. It’s just looking at the numbers.

Wow! That’s a lot of information Cameron provides. What do you think about his sole focus on Avatar and documentaries?